The Record
“After Us” was recorded on January 26th and 27th, 2019, a month to the day before my father died. A lot of the music I wrote for this album deals with death and dying, how we see ourselves in these moments and how we move on. Jon and I also recorded two of his compositions because I love them. When we recorded there just happened to be some songs about death on the record, but the death of my father reframed everything for me. To read that full story, just scroll down. I’m sharing it here because it feels important. Reading others stories around these topics helped me immensely.
Jon and I weave a rich musical tapestry with inspiration from both of our diverse musical backgrounds. We have been playing in this paired down duo setting around New York City since 2014, exploring the space that opens up when instruments are stripped away. We play originals and arrangements of standards and have performed at The Blue Note Jazz Club, Rockwood Music Hall, Cafe Vivaldi and more.
Jon Cowherd
The Kentucky-born, New Orleans-schooled, New York-based pianist Jon Cowherd is best known for his long-running partnership with drummer/bandleader Brian Blade, with whom he co-founded the Brian Blade Fellowship, The Fellowship’s highly acclaimed albums showcase Cowherd's stellar keyboard work and singular compositional skills. When not recording and touring with the Fellowship, Cowherd has worked extensively with a broad array of musicians from the jazz, pop and rock worlds.
The Story
On February 27th, 2018, my father passed away. Monday morning, February 26th, minutes after my piano tuner showed up, I got a call from the head doctor at Sahlgrenska in Gothenburg. The doctor was calling to tell me they had done everything they could for my dad, he was not conscious and only being kept alive through life support. The call was to get my permission, along with my brothers, to take him off life support. It was not a surprise, but that doesn’t make writing this any easier.
If you’ve heard someone tune a piano you’ll know it is not the most peaceful sound. In this moment it felt like every time he moved to a new out of tune string it ripped my heart open all over again. As soon as I got off the phone with the doctor I left the house, my husband Cody staying there with the tuner. I walked to the park a few blocks away and called my brothers. We spoke and all agreed to give the doctor the go ahead. I called my mom to let her know as well. My parents have been divorced for many years but they were good friends. She was out of cell phone range doing a 4 day bike odyssey with the Climate Ride in Death Valley so I left a message. I took great comfort in knowing she is in such good shape.
As I walked home to write the email a thought struck me. Kevin Salem and I had almost finished mixing this record. A lot of the music deals with the very vulnerable place of knowing this goodbye could very well be the last. Of dealing with living a continent away and not knowing if I should stay or go whenever something happened. Its been many years of something happening every few months, and each time it got harder. Capturing those feelings in music was my way to cope with them, and I felt such deep grief that he would never hear it. At this point the record was mixed, not sequenced and not mastered. There were some minor things that needed fixing. Other than that it was done. As I was thinking about dropping everything and flying to Sweden to be there when he died, it occurred to me that music cuts deeper in our consciousness than just about anything else. If he was already gone consciously, and there was no guarantee I would make it there in time, maybe my presence would be there in a more real way through the music.
As I walked in the door I made that decision. I had a few working sequences of the album sketched out and I listened through the one I thought was the truest. Because of the time restriction, I only listened heads and tails, not the full sequence like I usually do. When it felt true Cody put together a sequenced file for me that I sent to the doctor I had spoken with earlier. I asked him to play the album for my dad as he passed on. At this point the piano tuner had left, and hour later my first student showed up. I gave 6 lessons, went to a yoga class and had dinner and well, more than a few drinks, with a friend who’s mother passed away recently. Having her with me that night was amazing. There was something big and looming about this loss that night. Waiting for the email, and not knowing how I would react even if I was as well prepared as anyone can be. It turns out, I couldn’t homework my way out of the loss of my father. In sharing her experiences with me my friend brought me deep calm that was a huge help in getting through that first week.
After she left at around 2 am I tried to go to sleep, to no avail. 5.19 am I got the email from my aunt that they had started playing the record. 5.37 they turned off the machines. 9.39 he passed. They played this music the entire time.
It wasn’t easy to continue working on this record. For a week after his death I couldn’t bring myself to listen to it. I struggled with if I wanted to release it at all or just have it be my goodbye to him, privately. The second person to hear the album in its entirety was my mother. She came to stay with me for the weekend after his death instead of going home after her bike trip and having her with me was a huge comfort. We listened to the record together and she was very moved by it. Her words to me during the first song were “I know this cut straight to his soul, because it’s cutting straight to mine.” This moment brought the record back to life for me. The deeper I got into it the more I began to see the process of completing it as a gift. This wonderful community of artists helped me find a true expression of my grief, and my dad got to hear it. At the end of the day, he got to hear my farewell.
On the artwork
I have an approach I love using for the artwork of my albums. This is the fourth record I have done this with, each time with a different artist. I like to finish the music, mix and master, and then send it to the artist who I feel can capture the essence of the music in their work. I give them no instruction, just ask them to paint what they hear.
For “After Us” I asked Lina Müller to do the artwork. I’ve known her since I was 12, she was our exchange student from Switzerland. I’ve always really enjoyed and respected her art and considered her to be my big sister. This past year Lina and her boyfriend Luca won a prize for their artistic work to spend four months in New York and we reconnected while they were here.
I had asked Lina to do the artwork a few days before my dad passed away. She knew him well, we all stayed in touch after she went back to Switzerland and she would come up to visit. She began creating the artwork a few weeks after he passed away, and what she came up with is perfect. The outside is calm and peaceful, tranquil even. It has the silhouette of his fishing boat on it and the landmark lighthouse outside of Gothenburg near where we released his ashes to the ocean. She didn’t know we were planning to do this when she drew it, and seeing that landmark in there gave me chills.
The inside is red and black, violently raw. To me the combination of the two perfectly captures the state I was in while recording and completing this album. Most of the time calm and tranquil on the outside. Even appreciating the beauty and the love that was found in these very difficult moments. On the inside though; raw. High contrast and abstract, everything felt unreal. Lina really nailed it.
“Same Trees”
This piece was written while I was on tour in Denmark in the summer of 2015 (July 19th to be exact). I had a day off after the Aarhus Jazz Festival and my hosts were kind enough to take me to the woods. While walking through the forest I came to realize how much I miss trees living in New York City. At that point I was so in the grind and hyper focused I ignored the knowledge that I needed breaks. I stepped away from my friends and hugged a tree. Something released in my heart and I cried. For a while. Nature brings me back to what’s real, important and grounding. I had my friends drop me off at a practice room instead of going to dinner and wrote this, to capture the trees.
I love the idea of thematic development. I look for it all the time. In conversations, in music, in life. Sometimes the themes are strong for a week and then get replaced with others, but sometimes it takes years for me to see them. These months after my fathers death had a few bright spots of thematic development that stopped me in my tracks. This song and a few others from the album were at the center of them.
I realized one of the reasons those trees affected me so strongly is because my grandmother had just passed away. She lived a long and beautiful life and it was her time to go. I thought I was fine with it. Our farewell was me playing her favorite mozart pieces for her and then her going to sit out in the sun to look at her redwood tree while I went the airport to return to New York. It was perfect.
She died in April 2015. Being in the forest I felt her presence and among the trees in Aarhus that summer I finally let myself grieve. The trees held the space for me to honor this incredible, strong and beautiful woman I had looked up to my whole life. She was amazingly brave as a jewish girl escaping the nazis during the second world war, and dedicated her life to helping handicapped children in Mexico. I hope some day to be half the person she was, and she still inspires me every day.
This was also the summer I started going home more to see my dad. My grandmother dying made his death seem more real to me, and so I started making more of an effort to connect with him. Until this point we were cordial, but never close. Having written this song the day before I went to Sweden to see him, it filled that week. Having him hear it as he was passing to the other side felt like an amazing full circle to the part of our lives together where we were communicating and present for each other.
I opened the funeral on April 6th with “Same Trees” and closed it with “With A Smile” (more on that song later) and in the first 30 seconds I felt his presence there too. It broke my heart, but compelled me to keep playing anyway. After the funeral I didn’t touch my flute for a week until I returned to Aarhus to play. Another thematic development. It seems I go to Aarhus to heal. We played “Same Trees” on one of the gigs and I was literally shaking on stage. Every time I play it I get a little better, a little more whole. The music heals, not because I wrote it, or because I’m playing it, but simply because I am working to be open to letting it.
Thank you for listening and joining me in this journey. It has been very difficult, but in a lot of ways also very beautiful.
”How To Keep Moving, How To Stay”
I feel like Track 2 in a sequence holds the space of solidifying the world the record lives in. It needs to have a different flavor to Track 1, but not different enough that it is jarring. “How To Keep Moving, How To Stay” deal with similar subject matter as “Same Trees” but from a different angle. For a few years before recording this album I was making a conscious effort to be more present through the difficult moments in life. For me it was hard to find a balance between knowing when to stay in these moments to embrace everything that comes with it and deciding when and how to move on. I was really good at temporary solutions, things that felt better in the moment but when they ran out the issue I was running from was stronger. This song captures that process. I wrote it on a day my dad was in the hospital for an operation. He was in and out a lot so it was pretty routine, and I couldn’t fall apart every time it happened. It was difficult to know where the line is, and to keep going with life as usual in spite of that. Now I know this was the last time he made it out of the hospital. The time after I wrote this song was the time he died.
”Distant Dawn”
is a song that in spite of its dark and heavy character, ends with hope. Dawn always comes again, no matter how far into the darkness I go. Or if I disappear into the darkness, dawn will come without me.
I started writing Distant Dawn right before one of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever had. I had been keeping a secret for months, something that felt like a really big and life changing thing for me. The time holding and resisting felt like it would never end, and everything got colored by it. It built up and caused all sorts of tension in my life. Writing this piece made me realize I had to confront it, and no matter what was on the other end it had to be better than holding it in. To my surprise as soon as I said it out loud it didn’t seem like a big deal at all. I let go and the release was a rush and all that tension and stress seemed small, even though it had felt insurmountable just moments earlier and for months before that. I returned to the piano and wrote the final phrase. Dawn had come.
”Crimson”
For all of 2017 I felt raw, like my heart was an open wound. Everything that was going on politically has affected me deeply, often in ways that bled into the rest of my life. I wrote this song during the “Me Too” blowup, right after posting those words myself. I’ve spent so much of my life with a guard up, for many reasons, and I’m making an effort every day to not do that any more. It’s magical, the real human connections that can happen when I let that guard down. It’s also terrifying. So this song is titled “Crimson,” because I’ve come to find that for me being raw is better than numb.
“With A Smile”
is a song I wrote on tour in April 2017. It was a two week tour that started in Gothenburg. We spend most of those days I was home either rehearsing or playing gigs, and it felt strange to not be spending the time with my dad. He got to see the band play at Nefertiti, a really great club in my home town, and was very happy to get to see me play live. It was the first time since I was in high school, and a very special moment for me. He also hung out near us while we were rehearsing and was very happy to see the process.
Saying goodbye on this trip was incredibly difficult, as I had spent so little time with him over the three days I was there. I wasn’t comfortable sharing with my tour mates how hard this farewell really was as we were about to spend two weeks in very confined spaces and I didn’t want them to feel like I was an emotional wreck this early on in the tour. When I got to the friend I was staying with in Aarhus however I completely fell apart and melted onto the floor in tears. My friend said something to me that really resonated. He said; “Even if its not enough, you can leave with a smile because it is better that you were there at all.” This idea has been very comforting and something I’ve returned to a lot both while he was still alive and after he passed away. Do your best to make it better and leave with a smile.
”Blessings”
Jon Cowherd wrote this beautiful piece of music. To me it is very hopeful. There’s something in this song that makes me want to reach farther, turn the corner and see what I might find. It’s almost like it manages to recapture some of the innocence we loose when we enter the real world, whatever age we are when that happens. One of the things I love about Jon’s compositions and playing is that I can always hear some light in there, no matter how dense or dark the music. There’s always hope underneath.
”Practice Patience”
Patience is a virtue, but not one of mine. Things never happen fast enough and I have to constantly remind myself to slow down. Be patient. This song is a slow cycle with one more bar than expected to foster the idea of patience being a positive. Something I’m working on in life becoming a song.
”Baltica”
Another one of Jon Cowherds amazing compositions.
”After Us”
This piece was inspired by a beautiful poem by my oldest friend Elizagrace Madrone. The song straddles the hopeless and somehow romantic idea that nature will find a way to reinvent itself once humanity self-destructively ruins the planet. I find it hopeless on the point that we are a ridiculous species that would put such destruction on ourselves, but romantic in the way that when we disappear it doesn’t mean the end of the world, just the end of us. After my father passed this idea came into even more focus. There's always something after. After relationships, after projects, after death. Maybe not for me, but there's always something.